USFWS Region 7 Alaska Nonnative Plant Surveys - 2025 Survey Data

Occurrence Observation
Latest version published by United States Fish and Wildlife Service on Mar 26, 2026 United States Fish and Wildlife Service

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 19,813 records in English (10 MB) - Update frequency: as needed
Metadata as an EML file download in English (41 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (30 KB)

Description

In accordance with the orders of Executive Office of the President (2016) to prevent introduction, establishment, and spread of invasive species and to control and eradicate established populations, with an aim of minimizing their damage to the environment and natural resources, teams from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region surveyed for and treated non-native plants on and around Alaska National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska. This dataset includes occurrences resulting from these efforts.

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 19,813 records.

3 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

Occurrence (core)
19813
MeasurementOrFacts 
168958
Identification 
19813
Multimedia 
2

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is United States Fish and Wildlife Service. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 6e93498d-2585-4d2d-818a-81cb368c1165.  United States Fish and Wildlife Service publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.

Keywords

Occurrence; invasive species; Observation

External data

The resource data is also available in other formats

USFWS Region 7 Alaska Nonnative Plant Surveys - 2025 Survey Data https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190367 UTF-8 CSV, Biotic Observation Minimum Specification
USFWS Region 7 Alaska Nonnative Plant Surveys - 2025 Survey Data, AKEPIC submission https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190358 UTF-8 XML Spreadsheet
USFWS Region 7 Alaska Nonnative Plant Surveys - 2025 Survey Data, raw Survey123 data, CSV format https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190382 UTF-8 csv
USFWS Region 7 Alaska Nonnative Plant Surveys - 2025 Survey Data, raw Survey123 data, SHP format https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190386 UTF-8 shp
USFWS Region 7 Alaska Nonnative Plant Surveys - 2025 Survey Data, raw Survey123 data, file geodatabase https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190387 UTF-8 file geodatabase

Contacts

Matthew Bowser
  • Metadata Provider
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
  • Fish and Wildlife Biologist
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
  • PO Box 2139
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Diane Abraham
  • Originator
Sam Artaiz
  • Originator
  • Biological Technician
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
  • PO Box 2139
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Caleb Bailey
  • Originator
  • Biological Intern
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
Soldotna
Alaska
US
Ellary Battle
  • Originator
  • Field Intern
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Kylene Blossom
  • Originator
George Bonsall
  • Originator
  • Biological Technician
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Stacey Buckelew
  • Originator
  • Island Invasive Species Strike Team Biologist Stacey Buckelew
Sabrena Camp
  • Originator
  • Biologist
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Colin Canterbury
  • Originator
  • Biologist
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
  • PO Box 2139
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Jackie Cleveland
  • Originator
Mark Conrad
  • Originator
Caylen Cummins
  • Originator
  • Data Manager
Nathan Davis
  • Originator
  • Biological Technician
USFWS Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
  • PO Box 2139
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Lisa Dlugolecki
  • Originator
  • North Region Early Detection Rapid Response Project Manager
Allison Dulude
  • Originator
  • Biological Technician
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Dan Esler
  • Originator
Bill Farrell
  • Originator
  • Volunteer Roving Host
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
Lauren Flynn
  • Originator
Michael Foley
  • Originator
Carly Gerth
  • Originator
  • Biological Technician
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 7, Southwest/Southcentral EDRR Project Team
Soldotna
Alaska
US
Chris Haberbush
  • Originator
  • Stream Watch Coordinator
Kenai Watershed Forum
Kim Holzer
  • Originator
  • Invasive Species Coordinator
Anchorage
Alaska
US
Mary Hostetter
  • Originator
CaSandera Johnson
  • Originator
Nate Johnson
  • Originator
Bill Kane
  • Originator
Christa Kennedy
  • Originator
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
Deb Kurtz
  • Originator
Jesi Lobato
  • Originator
Ashley Lutto
  • Originator
  • Fish and Wildlife Biologist
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Adrienne McGill
  • Originator
Jackie Morton
  • Originator
  • Biological Technician
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Matt Nielson
  • Originator
Tessie Offner
  • Originator
  • Biological Technician
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 7, Southwest/Southcentral EDRR Project Team
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Corin Pike
  • Originator
  • Biological Intern
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Mychelle Smith
  • Originator
Olivia Somers
  • Originator
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Stephen Spangler
  • Originator
Michael Stone
  • Originator
United States Fish and Wildlife Service
Aurelia Umholtz
Dominique Watts
  • Originator
  • Wildlife Biologist/Pilot
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
  • PO Box 2139
99669 Soldotna
Alaska
US
Alison Williams
  • Originator
Ben Wishnek
  • Originator
  • South Region Early Detection Rapid Response Project Manager
Soldotna
Alaska
US
Jonah Withers
  • Originator
  • Fisheries and Ecological Services Data Manager

Geographic Coverage

The geographic extent included much of southern, western, central, and northern Alaska, USA.

Bounding Coordinates South West [52.03, -175.14], North East [68.45, -147.04]

Taxonomic Coverage

We surveyed for selected lists of non-native vascular plant species. In most surveys we limited our searches to high priority invasive species, but in some surveys we surveyed exhaustively for all non-native vascular plant species.

Kingdom plantae

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 2025-05-27 / 2025-10-22

Project Data

In accordance with the orders of Executive Office of the President (2016) to prevent introduction, establishment, and spread of invasive species and to control and eradicate established populations, with an aim of minimizing their damage to the environment and natural resources, teams from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region surveyed for and treated non-native plants on and around Alaska National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska. This dataset includes occurrences resulting from these efforts.

Title USFWS Region 7 Alaska Nonnative Plant Surveys
Identifier https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/189141
Funding Funding for this work in 2025 was provided by National Wildlife Refuge System Strike Team Funds.
Study Area Description The study area included Anchorage, Bettles, Galbraith Lake, Galena, Grayling Lake on the Dalton Highway, Igiugig, Moose Creek, North Pole, and parts of Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuge, Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, Togiak National Wildlife Refuge, and Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, USA.
Design Description Sampling design varied among the teams. For elodea surveys by Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Biology Team, Bowser (2025c) implemented a spatially balanced design to select waterbodies to be sampled. Sampling locations within waterbodies were selected by splitting the perimeters of waterbodies into roughly 30–60, depending the lengths of the perimeters (Bowser, 2025c, 2025d). Within each segment, a sampling site was selected in optimal elodea habitat as determined by guidelines in Bowser (2025d).

The personnel involved in the project:

Matthew Bowser

Sampling Methods

Four teams (Island Invasive Strike Team, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Biology Team, North Region Early Detection Rapid Response Team, and South Region Early Detection Rapid Response Team) collected non-native plant data following Alaska Exotic Plant Information Clearinghouse database standards (AKEPIC, 2018, 2020, 2026). The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Biology Team followed the protocol of Bowser (2025d) for elodea surveys.

Study Extent The study extent was from 52.03 to 68.45 °N and from 147.04 to 175.14 °W in Alaska, USA.

Method step description:

  1. We collected data in the field using one of multiple ESRI Survey123 (https://survey123.arcgis.com/) forms (Bowser, 2025b; USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team, 2025a, 2025c). Instructions for these forms are available from Bowser (2025a).
  2. Data were checked using a Quarto (https://quarto.org/) script (USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team, 2025b) that ran R, version 4.4.2 (R Core Team, 2024) and used the R packages arcgisbinding, version 1.0.1.311 (Esri, 2024); fontawesome, version 0.5.3 (Iannone, 2024); leaflet, version 2.2.3 (Cheng et al., 2025); and sf, version 1.0-20 (Pebesma, 2018; Pebesma and Bivand, 2023). These data were reformatted to the Biotic Observation Minimum Specification format (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, National Wildlife Refuge System, Inventory & Monitoring Branch, 2023) using a Quarto script (USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team, 2026) that ran R, version 4.5.2 (R Core Team, 2025) and used the R packages arcgisbinding, version 1.0.1.311 (Esri, 2024); h3jsr, version 1.3.1 (O’Brien, 2023); sf, version 1.0-24 (Pebesma, 2018; Pebesma and Bivand, 2023); and uuid, version 1.2-2 (Urbanek and Ts’o, 2026).

Bibliographic Citations

  1. AKEPIC (2018) Alaska Exotic Plants Information Clearinghouse (AKEPIC) data dictionary. Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska Natural Heritage Program, Alaska Center for Conservation Science, University of Alaska, Anchorage. https://accs.uaa.alaska.edu/wp-content/uploads/AKEPIC_DataDictionary.pdf https://accs.uaa.alaska.edu/wp-content/uploads/AKEPIC_DataDictionary.pdf
  2. AKEPIC (2020) Alaska Exotic Plants Information Clearinghouse (AKEPIC) user’s manual. Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska Center for Conservation Science, University of Alaska, Anchorage. https://accs.uaa.alaska.edu/wp-content/uploads/AKEPIC_UserManual.pdf https://accs.uaa.alaska.edu/wp-content/uploads/AKEPIC_UserManual.pdf
  3. AKEPIC (2026) Alaska Exotic Plant Information Clearinghouse database. Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska Center for Conservation Science, University of Alaska, Anchorage. https://akepic.portal.axds.co https://akepic.portal.axds.co
  4. Bowser ML (2025a) Alaska Region invasive plant surveys Survey123 form instructions. Alaska: United States Fish and Wildlife Service. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182042 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182042
  5. Bowser ML (2025b) Kenai non-native plant surveys 2025 Survey123 XLSForm, version 2025-05-30T1235AKDT. Soldotna, Alaska: United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182017 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182017
  6. Bowser ML (2025c) Sampling design for Kenai National Wildlife Refuge aquatic invasive species surveys, 2025. Soldotna, Alaska: United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/188315 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/188315
  7. Bowser ML (2025d) Site-specific protocol for aquatic invasive species management. Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Version 0.5. Soldotna, Alaska: United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182422 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182422
  8. Cheng J, Schloerke B, Karambelkar B, Xie Y & Aden-Buie G (2025) leaflet: Create interactive web maps with the JavaScript ’Leaflet’ library. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=leaflet https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=leaflet
  9. Esri (2024) arcgisbinding: Bindings for ArcGIS. http://esri.com http://esri.com
  10. Executive Office of the President (2016) Executive Order 13751 of December 5, 2016. Safeguarding the nation from the impacts of invasive species. 2016-29519 (81 FR 88609), Federal Register, 81(236), pp. 88609–88614. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/08/2016-29519/safeguarding-the-nation-from-the-impacts-of-invasive-species https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/08/2016-29519/safeguarding-the-nation-from-the-impacts-of-invasive-species
  11. Iannone R (2024) fontawesome: Easily work with ’Font Awesome’ icons. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=fontawesome https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=fontawesome
  12. O’Brien L (2023) h3jsr: Access Uber’s H3 library. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=h3jsr https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=h3jsr
  13. Pebesma E (2018) Simple Features for R: Standardized support for spatial vector data, The R Journal, 10(1), pp. 439–446. https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2018-009 https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2018-009
  14. Pebesma E & Bivand R (2023) Spatial data science: With applications in R. Chapman and Hall/CRC. https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429459016 https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429459016
  15. R Core Team (2024) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/ https://www.R-project.org/
  16. R Core Team (2025) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/ https://www.R-project.org/
  17. Urbanek S & Ts’o T (2026) uuid: Tools for generating and handling of UUIDs. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.uuid https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.uuid
  18. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, National Wildlife Refuge System, Inventory & Monitoring Branch (2023) Biotic Observation Minimum Specification for FWS inventory and monitoring surveys. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/153885 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/153885
  19. USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team (2025a) North Region Early Detection and Rapid Response Survey123 XLSForm for nonnative plant surveys, 2025. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/191748 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/191748
  20. USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team (2025b) Quarto document for checking data from USFWS R7 invasive plant surveys. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190355 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190355
  21. USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team (2025c) South Region Early Detection and Rapid Response Survey123 XLSForm for nonnative plant surveys, 2025. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/191751 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/191751
  22. USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team (2026) Quarto document for reformatting USFWS R7 invasive plant surveys occurrence data for archival as a BOMS/DwC dataset. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190352 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190352

Additional Metadata

Alternative Identifiers 6e93498d-2585-4d2d-818a-81cb368c1165
https://ipt.gbif.us/resource?r=usfwsr7-alaska-nonnative-plant-surveys-2025